A Pretty Cool Method of Upgrading to ESXi 5.1

I recently came across an interesting article by Andreas Peetz which shows you how to patch an ESXi host using an image profile that is directly available on VMware's online depot within the ESXi shell. I knew that VMware had online depots for use with VUM and Auto Deploy but I was not aware of this particular method, especially directly from the host.Disclaimer: This method assumes you can install the default ESXi Image Profile with no additional drivers or packages, else you may have connectivity issue after the upgrade. If you still need to customize the ESXi Image Profile before installation, you will still need to use something like Image Builder and then upload that to your online depot.

Note: There are many ways that you can patch/upgrade your ESXi hosts, here is another article that provides more details for command-line only methods.

Before you get started, you will need to make sure that your ESXi host has the httpClient firewall rule enabled, else you will not be able to connect to VMware's online depot. To enable this, run the following ESXCLI command:

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

Also make sure that your ESXi host can reach the following URL (you can specify a proxy if needed):

If you are able to successfully connect to the online depot, you see a list of all the ESXi Image Profiles that are available to you. You will see two ESXi 5.1 Image Profiles (these were recently published), one with VMware Tools and one without VMware Tools.

Note: Before you begin, make sure you do not have any running VMs and put your host into maintenance mode.

Let's go ahead and upgrade our ESXi 5.0 Update 1 host to latest ESXi 5.1. To install the new Image Profile, run the following command:

This can take a few minutes to complete depending on how fast you can pull down the Image Profile. Once it is done, you will see all the new VIBs that have been updated and you will be asked to reboot for the changes to go into effect and then you will be running ESXi 5.1! Pretty cool IMO!

Comments

“You can upgrade and apply patches to ESXi 5.0.x hosts by using the esxcli command-line utility for ESXi to install ESXi 5.1 from a download depot on vmware.com or from a downloaded ZIP file of a depot that is prepared by a VMware partner.”

~ # esxcli software profile install -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-5.1.0-799733-standard [Exception] You attempted to install an image profile which would have resulted in the removal of VIBs [‘Cisco_bootbank_cisco-vem-v142-esx_4.2.1.1.5.1a.0-3.0.1’]. If this is not what you intended, you may use the esxcli software profile update command to preserve the VIBs above. If this is what you intended, please use the –ok-to-remove option to explicitly allow the removal. Please refer to the log file for more details.~ #

I know this is an older posting (earlier this year) but it absolutely rocked and is not only a different way to upgrade but an awesome way to upgrade. Worked flawlessly on my ESXi box (SH67H3) after struggling with some other methods. It took a while… but when it completed… all was golden. Thanks again.

Thanks for this post. Way easier then running around with media to our school sites running ESXi Free.I ran the following to install the latest 5.1 Update 1 release and it worked awesome. Took about 45 minutes for the updates to download install and reboot.Ran on Dell PowerEdge R620 running ESXi Free 5.0 Dell Customized ESXi installation.

This unfortunetly did not work for me, and no one else in google seems to be experiencing the same problem. All I can do is populate the list of available profiles, and the one that should be showing under Vsphere -> Summary -> Host Profile : is ESXi-5.5.0-1331820-standard, but instead it just says VERY FRUSTRATING!!

~ # esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-5.5.0-133182
0-standard
[InstallationError]
No image profile is found on the host or image profile is empty. An image profile is required to install or remove VIBs. To install an image profile, use the esxcli image profile install command.
Please refer to the log file for more details.
~ #

[…] our ESXi host), I will not be able to update my whitebox using the online method as described here. The patch resolves quite a few issues as described here. After your host has been successfully […]

[…] everytime they release a new version I can probably use a different one. Normally I really like this online way described on virtualGhetto. Although this time I’m going to use a different way, cause my new […]

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William Lam is a Staff Solutions Architect working in the VMware Cloud on AWS team within the Cloud Platform Business Unit (CPBU) at VMware. He focuses on Automation, Integration and Operation of the VMware Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC).